Author Archives: dave shannon

Weblog # 4

1. https://gavinlakecamp.wordpress.com
   1. This is the website of the camp that my students and I had our outdoor education experience. You can see that they rely on donations for their operations budget. It is a very familiar set up that you would see at most summer camps. Several wood cabins, main lodge, shared bathroom, campfire pit, grass field, etc. If you happen to live or teach near Williams Lake or 100 mile I highly recommend it.
2. http://www.sd27.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2015-02-16-gavin-lake-fall-school-program.pdf
   1. This is the sd27 resource package for teachers in sd27 who might want to take their students to Gavin Lake. I was rushed when I took my students. It was only a couple days notice that we had about going and I just went for it head first. It was really helpful to have this package when we went. I would have been lost without it.
3. https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=J5NtoXOd0tcC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Redefining+Science+Education+for+Aboriginal+Students.&ots=zvuhgaIkUG&sig=nVHq6uyHDAYtidNZCxprrPFUnUA#v=onepage&q=Redefining%20Science%20Education%20for%20Aboriginal%20Students.&f=false
   1. This is from my research into some of the theories that my field trip with my students to Gavin Lake based its activities on. I remember clearly my time with one of my groups at the water ecology activity where we were guided into learning about the environment at Gavin Lake. I was surprised at some of the knowledge that my students had at the life cycle of fish and other water animals. I wasn’t sure how much time they spend outdoors but clearly they have spent significant time camping and around nature. I can certainly see how valuable it is to allow children to spend time outside with their parents or elders learning about the environment. I suppose that urban aboriginal youth would be vulnerable to missing out on some of these experiences, thus all the more need to make them a priority.
4. https://books.google.ca/books?id=RSzgtQTLg_AC&pg=PR19&lpg=PR19&dq=An+Aboriginal+Approach+to+Healing+Education+at+an+Urban+High+School.%22&source=bl&ots=j1FhV4FfyR&sig=SSbvg4-n9D6lgy8uwK5pM9fKhh8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7qqC70v7QAhWD0FQKHaHtAGQQ6AEIGTAA#v=onepage&q=An%20Aboriginal%20Approach%20to%20Healing%20Education%20at%20an%20Urban%20High%20School.%22&f=false
   1. This flows from my last page into looking at the challenges that urban aboriginals are experiencing at the larger schools with more diverse populations. Although it did not contain what I was hoping for in terms of what programs are being offered to aboriginals for their education, it did provide some broader examples of programs that can work with all students.
5. http://www.ainlay.ca/datafiles/Ourdeva/OjibwaLearning.pdf
   1. What was great about finding this article was how it was put into the perspective of learning through an aboriginal point of view. Western education has been imposed on aboriginals in Canada with the thought process being that the western way is the best and only way. It would be interesting in seeing an education system built around what was best for the students, not most convenient for parents and educators. I would imagine in this new student education system that significant time would be spent outdoors, for extended periods of time being taught how to hunt, fish, how nature works, the humans impact on the environment, etc. I imagine that this was the education system similar to the way aboriginal students were taught before the encroachment of western ideas.

Weblog #3

1. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/nanook-of-the-north/
   1. This was a bit of a combo search as I was doing some research into documentaries and this one stood out for being one of the first of its kind to use footage to successfully combine documentary footage with the art of storytelling in cinema. It’s interesting how some of the critiques about the film were how some of the scenes were staged a bit. But that is the magic of cinema. A director is free to capture anything they need to fulfill the intention of the story. Although some of the footage is staged, I don’t think it misrepresents the life or skills of “Nanook”.

2. http://www.forestschoolcanada.ca/wp-content/themes/wlf/images/FSC-Guide_web.pdf?date=july72014
   1. Next stop is one from the resources of the Forest and Nature School pdf. I was thinking about how the outdoor activities that we experienced at Gavin Lake Forest Education Centre were designed and set up. I was struck by how important this experience of going there must have been for my students. I can still vividly recall most of the trip, and I’m certain that my students have a better memory than I do. This pdf is a very clean resource book for people looking into for more information about outdoor school and the benefits that they provide for students. I was looking for the inclusion of the Gavin Lake Forest Society in the recommended programs at the back of the pdf. Not included.

3. http://www.saplingsoutdoorprogram.ca
   1. This is one of the recommended outdoor programs that is running in my school district, West Vancouver. I am curious to check it out as our district, and my school, has one of the highest household incomes in the province. It looks like a typical preschool/daycare program where they spend a lot of time outside, but maybe more focused on learning about the outdoors and nature. Its hard to say, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about what the kids do on a typical day.

4. http://www.citylab.com/design/2013/09/what-our-kids-dont-learn-when-they-dont-play/6972/
   1. This is an article found on the Saplings webpage in their resources webpage. One of the points of the article is how youth spend a lot of time in structured environments, from schools to being shuttled to after school activities and the like, if they can afford them. I am happy to say that my kids don’t have a lot of activities after school and spend a lot of time outside with the kids in the neighbourhood, especially in the summer when the weather is nice. Working in West Vancouver I see a lot of students that look like they have been in structured activities or playing inside on their gaming devices.

5. https://aeon.co/essays/children-today-are-suffering-a-severe-deficit-of-play
   1. This is an article similar to the one above about how playing outside is extremely important to that mental health and well-being of youth. I’m going to relate this back to my time in Anahim Lake. The students there generally spent a lot of time outdoors, weather permitting. Even in the frozen cold of the winter they still found time to good outside. However considering the limited amount of daylight hours in the winter a lot of the daylight was wasted spent inside at school. Students would arrive at sunrise and go home at sunset. Students were to go outside at recess and lunch every day but it was only for a few minutes at time due to the -20 C °. Most of the students would go out on the weekends and play outdoor hockey, ride snowmobiles, or hunt.

Weblog #2

1. https://nacla.org/article/long-time-ago-future-indigenous-media-digital-age
   1. One of my observations when I was teaching at a rural school with a large Aboriginal population of students was there connection with technology. I had made it a goal to increase the student’s access to computers in my classroom. So I gathered all the unused computers in the school and hooked them all up in the classroom. It gave the students an opportunity to access technology that they didn’t have at home. Most homes did not have the Internet, and therefore very few had computers. The only Internet people could get in town that was public was by siphoning the data from the school, the band store or the public library (which was a trailer opened 2 days a week).

Indigenous peoples have been amazingly adaptive and creative with new media technologies, applying them to their own lifeways and maintaining cultural boundaries rather than simply assimilating into the dominant social order. Communities that survived the cataclysmic forces of colonization are now telling their stories and constructing new forms of cultural power in the digital age.

Michael Marker. Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics, and Politics by Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart, eds., Duke University Press (2008)

2. http://buffysainte-marie.com
   1. The previous article talked about a seminar that Buffy Sainte-Marie conducted and I head to check her out. I heard of her before when I was teaching in Anahim Lake and she was visiting a town nearby. I never got to go to her event but it looks like it would have been very educational. I had no idea she had won an Academy Award for her song writing.
3. http://www.cradleboard.org/main.html
   1. Sainte-Marie helped found the Cradleboard project and to be honest I have never heard of it before. Lots of great teaching resources can be found here. Although I am having problems with accessing the web page. If I was still teaching elementary students this would be very usable for me.
4. http://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/learning-from-the-land-while-preserving-culture-1.3717351/indigenous-educator-uses-land-as-text-in-outdoor-university-course-1.3717353
   1. I had really wanted to tie what I was learning with what I had experienced with my teaching experience in Anahim Lake. I took my students on a field trip to an outdoor education camp and we had a great time. This podcast from the CBC show Unreserved covered a lot of things that I experienced with my students.
5. http://www.mfnerc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/CKP14_RegistrationKit_Web.pdf
   1. Looks like the end of the journey. I had tried to do more research on Tasha Spillett but I think I’m at a dead end. There isn’t a lot here to go but I will pick up the trail another time.

Module 1 Weblog

1. http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=813
   • An excellent place to start to understand the generational torture that aboriginals endured under the residential school system. One of the areas that I look at is under a reconciliation tab. I head to the one that involves the media. As a Film & TV educator, this is my jam.
2. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-history-of-residential-schools-in-canada-1.702280
   • The CBC has established an in-depth resource of the history of the Residential School system in Canada. The collection includes an historical time-line, an archive of news items, FAQs and much more. It’s from here that I get a bit of refresher of the history of residential schools and their impact.
3. http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/its-debatable-native-rights
   • From here I look into the CBC archives. It is hard to find the category relating to native issues, it is buried in lifestyle section. One radio clip that catches my eye, “It’s Debatable – Native Rights?”. Having a listen, it is a snapshot into the racism that exists in 1967. The clip is of panel interview with 2 high school students debating with Marlene Castellano, a university-educated native woman who later became a university professor.
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJ0o2F7fGo
   • Audio only goes so far. So I travel to do some video research on Dr. Marlene Castellano and find her speaking speaking at the Symposium on Reconciliation in Ontario in Toronto, February, 2011. The camera work is shoddy and it is broken up into 5-5 mintue clips. I almost dismissed it as there was other, longer videos of Dr. Castellano speaking but as I was about to move on I heard her get emotional when about talking about her feelings towards the treatment of the Mohawk peoples.
5. http://fngovernance.org/publication_docs/reconciliation-report-final_0311.pdf
   • A link on the video sends me to a pdf document titled, Symposium on RECONCILIATION IN ONTARIO Opportunities & Next Steps Report on Proceedings. I don’t read the entire thing, but one part that caught my eye discusses this report.

This report is a call to action. It is a compilation of the many ideas, issues, opportunities, next steps and actions identified by event participants. Participants suggested dozens of ways for Ontario’s (and Canada’s) First Nations, citizens, youth, communities, industry, educators and governments to begin the process of reconciliation.

Love it. I will use this document as a reference for the rest of the term.